I read my eyes out and can’t read half enough…. The more one reads the more one sees we have to read.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter to Abigail Adams (28 Dec 1794)
Quotations about:
books
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) Roman orator, statesman, philosopher
(Paraphrase)
(Source)
This appears to be a paraphrase of:
Since Tyrannio has arranged my books, the house seems to have acquired a soul.
[Postea vero quam Tyrannio mini libros disposuit, mens addita videtur meis aedibus.]
From Epistulae ad Atticum [Letters to Atticus], Book 4, Letter 8 (4.8) (Apr-May 56 BC) [tr. Winstedt (1912)].
Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. They want books as a Turk is thought to want concubines — not to be hastily deflowered, but to be kept at their master’s call, and enjoyed more often in thought than in reality.
Robertson Davies (1913-1995) Canadian author, editor, publisher
Tempest-Tost, ch. 6 (1951)
Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings.
[Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.]
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) German poet and critic
Almansor: A Tragedy, l. 245 (1823)
Alt trans:
- "Where they burn books, at the end they also burn people."
- "Where they burn books, they will also burn people."
- "It is there, where they burn books, that eventually they burn people."
- "Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings."
- "Where they burn books, they also burn people."
- "Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men."
- "Wherever books are burned, sooner or later men are also burned."
Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
Apothegms, # 97 (1624)
See Alfonso X.
Cave ab homine unius libri.
[Beware of anyone who has just one book.]
(Other Authors and Sources)
Latin proverb
Sometimes attributed to Thomas Aquinas. See also George Herbert.
In literature, as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.
[En littérature comme en amour, on est surpris par les choix des autres.]
André Maurois (1885-1967) French author [b. Émile Salomon Wilhelm Herzog]
The Art of Living [Un Art de Vivre], ch. 6 “The Art of Working” (1939) [tr. Whitall (1940)]
(Source)
(Source (French)). Sometimes cited to the New York Times, but only because it was reprinted there in the article “Reading Matter: Some Bookish Quotes” (14 Apr 1963).
I cannot live without books.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to John Adams (10 Jun 1815)
(Source)
Damn all expurgated books; the dirtiest book of all is the expurgated book.
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) American poet
(Attributed)
Paraphrase of a comment by Whitman to Horace Traubel, in Traubel's memoir With Walt Whitman in Camden (1906), entry dated 9 May 1999: "Damn the expurgated books! I say damn 'em! The dirtiest book in all the world is the expurgated book." This was in discussion about William Rossetti, who had published an bowdlerized version of Whitman's Leaves of Grass. See here for more discussion.
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of enquiry, and of criminal enquiry too, as an offence against religion: that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? And are we to have a Censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatise religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a Priest to be our Inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, & what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not; and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason. If M. de Becourt’s book be false in it’s facts, disprove them; if false in it’s reasoning, refute it. but, for god’s sake, let us freely hear both sides, if we chuse.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) American political philosopher, polymath, statesman, US President (1801-09)
Letter to Nicolas G. Dufief (19 Apr 1814)
(Source)
Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887) American clergyman and orator
“Subtleties of Book Buyers,” Star Papers (1855)
